Tag Archives: exercise

I’m excited to share this interview with Israel Halperin – an MMA & Thai Kickboxing athlete, trainer, and researcher. He’s competed, trained, and studied internationally with many prominent figures in his field.

Cobra Classic MMA fight, California – 2001

Israel’s perspective is a balanced one. While remaining practical and relevant for his athletes, he keeps his biases in check through his humbling research experience. I’m proud to know him personally. In this short but informative discussion Israel shares some of his insight on training athletes.

People tend to focus on a lot of silly details when it comes to designing exercise programs. Many of them don’t matter.

But some do!

One of the details that may actually matter is exercise order. A review article recently published in the journal Sports Medicine summarized the current research on this topic. 1 Most of the findings are intuitive, lining up well with conventional gym-wisdom. However, there were a few findings that go against popular belief.

Basically, mental imagery (a.k.a “motor imagery”) is when you imagine yourself doing something(a specific sports skill – like kicking a soccer ball), to improve the skill in the real world.

It’s like practicing in your head.

Most athletes do this to some degree, usually right before a real attempt at a skill. When I’m bored, I often daydream about doing incredible moves (some are probably impossible). But practicing mental imagery on purpose – actually taking time to sit and imagine every detail – is something I’ve never really tried.

Skeptical of its true power, I did a little research. What I found was very interesting…